1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a vehicle (such as a truck) mounted with equipment for crushing empty vessels such as empty bottles or for carrying out other treatment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As apparatus for crushing empty bottles or the like to make their treatment, those disclosed in Japanese Patent Applications Laid-open No. 2-4483 No. 3-118848, etc. are hitherto known in the art. Treatment vehicles or trucks are also known such that a treatment apparatus, a feed conveyor for lifting empty bottles or the like introduced, to carry them up to a feed opening of the treatment apparatus, a hopper for receiving chips obtained after crushing, and a transport conveyor for transporting the chips from the treatment apparatus into the hopper are altogether mounted on the body of a running vehicle.
In conventional treatment vehicles, however, since the chips are discharged from the rear of the hopper, the hopper is provided at a forward position, or on the side, of the feed conveyor for lifting empty vessels from the rear of the vehicle body to carry them into the hopper. Hence, space for setting up the feed conveyor and space for setting up the hopper must be left on the vehicle body, so that the whole space on the vehicle body becomes short and the space for setting up other machinery becomes small to cause difficulties in the maintenance of the apparatus. To eliminate such difficulties, the conveyors, the hopper and so forth must be made smaller in size and the whole treatment capacity can not help being curtailed.
The conventional treatment vehicles as stated above are also of a type in which, when the chips received in the hopper are secondarily treated for regeneration or discarded for reclamation, the chips are discharged by raising the whole treatment apparatus including conveyors to tilt the deck for dumping or by manually raking out the chips. Such discharge operation is accompanied with some danger, or an oil-pressure drive mechanism for the dumping must be provided. Such disadvantages have been unsettled.